20 fun phone games from the 2010s

Temple Run had everyone attached to their phones for a solid month in the 2010s, running around a temple collecting coins and avoiding traps. It was so popular it even yielded a sequel, the creatively named Temple Run 2. 

Candy Crush Saga is still popular on some phones. Though not everyone loves this game, almost everyone has downloaded it at least once. Seriously, it has nearly 3 billion downloads in total. 

Who knew that flinging perturbed fowl at construction sites could make such an entertaining game? Angry Birds was so popular in the 2010s that it warranted a spinoff animated movie. 

For those who weren’t enamored with Angry Birds, there was Flappy Bird. Rather than hurling birds with the intention of them hitting something, the object of Flappy Bird was to avoid running into anything. 

App developers in the 2010s had a knack for rebranding classic party games as digital. Draw Something was just Pictionary on your phone, but it was sure a lot of fun. 

But when it came to rebranding games, none was more fun than Words With Friends. It was just a one-on-one game of digital Scrabble, but it was called something different, which made it fresh, exciting, and completely addictive. 

For several months in the 2010s, if you wanted to do anything outside, you had to be aware of all the people walking around in search of Pokémon. Pokémon GO had people who’d never played Pokémon in their life walking around their neighborhood like a maniac. 

HQ Trivia had everyone stop what they were doing in the middle of the day, convinced they were about to win hundreds of thousands of dollars from knowing an obscure fact. Did anyone ever win? We’re led to believe that no one ever won. 

Doodle Jump was the most adorable phone game of the 2010s. You could spend hours taking that little cartoon dude higher and higher until you wondered if the game supported the height you had reached. 

Jetpack Joyride had many of the same features as previous similar games, but those didn’t have jetpacks. There is something so fantastical yet satisfying about pretending to be flying around using a jetpack.  

No other celebrity could’ve made as much money as Kim Kardashian did with Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Though it wasn’t a lasting venture for her, she struck at the exact right time and made beaucoup bucks. 

Mobile app developers in the 2010s really capitalized on players’ mass love for running games. Being a degenerate teenager in Subway Surfer was a prime example of that phenomenon. 

Clash of Clans appealed to the group of gamers who love to build digital communities. The twist on this one was that you also got to take what you built to war. It’s easy to see why parents are often concerned with video game premises. 

You could play Farmville on the computer, but it was much smarter to play it on your phone so you didn’t miss a planting or a harvest. Many people got started on this game through Facebook, and the most addicted took their gameplay to the app. 

Dots was the perfect mobile game. You could play it without any sound, and it was mindless enough to keep you engaged while still paying attention to whatever else was happening in the real world. Dots still deserves a round of applause. 

Unblock Me was similar to Dots in how you could engage with it. It was a major time suck, but you felt better about playing it than other games because you could sort of categorize it as mental stimulation. 

Cutting fruit in real life can be a horrible task, but slashing fruit with a machete in Fruit Ninja was more fun than almost anything in the 2010s. The game could be played on some consoles, but it was way more satisfying to play with your finger on a phone. 

Cut the Rope is a dumb name for a game, but it tells you exactly what you will be doing. And for some strange reason, cutting ropes was mindless fun that could be done for hours on end. 

Some mobile games that were first released as computer games made a splash in the 2010s, but one of the best was Bejeweled Classic. An updated version of Bejeweled 2, this game will always have a special place in the hearts of millennial gamers. 

Super Mario Run was for the Mario fans who were always trying to enter the little plumber’s world. It had all the elements of the classic Nintendo world inside a phone game. There’s a reason Nintendo is still raking it in all these years later.